There is a capability gap in being able to rapidly identify human DNA in austere field forward environments. There are no current field portable devices for rapid human DNA identification, nor are there are any DNA based technologies that can rapidly predict human physical traits. Current DNA analysis is limited to being performed in forensic laboratories and often takes more than eight hours to construct a DNA profile. The capability for rapid field-forward identification of an individual can for example be useful in police stations to determine, prior to suspect release, or whether an individual may be associated with crime scene evidence; in immigration offices to support or reject claims of familial relatedness used to justify permission to immigrate, while at borders and ports; to determine whether individuals detained while entering the country illegally have profiles in terrorist DNA databases; in many applications in military settings, such as to distinguish friend from foe in combat, to permit access through military checkpoints, and to determine attribution of enemy munitions and weapons. The time between sample collection in the field and obtaining a result in the laboratory is currently too long to allow real-time decisions and dispositions in police, immigration, border, and military applications.
Currently, the most common method of human DNA identification is utilizing Short Tandem Repeats (STRs). STRs have a high power of discrimination between unrelated individuals (1 in 1.83×1017 in Caucasian-Americans), but have a high mutation rate and limited use in degraded samples due to large amplification products. Additionally, rapid, integrated human DNA analysis devices are commercially available, however they are large, requiring laboratory foot space and are not portable and ready for field use.
Therefore, there is a need for integrated, self-contained systems for portable, on-site, field-forward, rapid human DNA genotyping with the capability of querying the genetic information for its correlation to identification or physical characteristics of an individual.